effects resulting from a warming planet could be avoid- ed and that climate change might be reversed. Now, just a little over two decades later, faced with the reality that the global average temperature has risen about 1°C and climate change’s effects are now commonplace and well-documented, McKibben’s message has changed. We no longer live on the same planet anymore, and our only alternative at this point is to get used to it. Eaarth (with two a’s) is the moniker that McKibben gives our new planet. Certainly we can call it whatever we want, but we must come to grips with the fact that this is not the same planet that it once was. The tundra is thawing, glaciers are disappearing, deserts and tropical zones are expanding, oceans are acidify- ing, warming, and rising, weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable, and drinking water is becoming salinated and depleted. “Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality,” and it’s largely because “we didn’t take our foot off the gas when we had the chance.”
McKibben shares this news soberly and yet as light-heartedly as possible. Like anyone else who studies the effects of climate change, he’d rather be wrong, but the evidence is stacked against us. We are now faced with a grave set of options: choose now to readjust our societies to fit our new reality, or continue on as we have been and watch as our new reality makes the readjust- ment for us. McKibben makes the case in Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet that backing off is the better option, that a growth-based economy is no longer plausible, that ambitious, centralized, national and global projects are moot at this point. According to McKibben our best chance for survival is to go local, get small, and stay connected. While the first half of Eaarth is spent lay- ing out the trouble we’re in—making certain that we comprehend the gravity of our situation, the second half is meant to offer us hope, something to cling to as we stumble toward the precipice. The challenge is to make these arguments convincingly. From my perspec- tive, McKibben does so famously; however, with all the uncertainty inherent in our predicament and the fact that Eaarth is inhabited by seven billion individuals, all members of various societies and cultures, distinct and diverse in their myriad approaches and objectives, outlining a single good way to address our problems and getting everyone on board is beyond improbable. This is something that anyone endeavoring to tell people how to live must first understand. There is no silver bullet.
With that said, anyone entrenched in the cur- rent environmental movement, will find McKibben’s suggestions familiar and obvious. Smaller farms and local, organic food production. Considerable reductions in energy consumption and decentralized, renewable production of energy. Local economies/communities and mindful consumption of material goods. The one item that might be a bit surprising is McKibben’s love- affair with the Internet, but considering all the potential that the world wide web has for spreading information, providing entertainment, and fending off prejudice while cultivating tolerance, doing whatever we can to keep the Internet around seems like a pretty swell idea. Eaarth is not meant to be yet another doom-
and-gloom book. True, it does address our doom, and it will make you feel gloomy, but that’s unavoidable with a topic like this. For someone like McKibben, who has made it his mission in life to educate the global populace about the painful truths and harsh realities of climate change, doing so must be thankless and heart-breaking considering how few will listen and how little will be done about it. And yet, somehow McKibben has kept his spirits up and has produced an incredibly readable, engrossing, and compelling book that has the potential to inspire its readers to move more “lightly, carefully, gracefully” on our formidable new planet. —Dan Murphy
[Editor’s Note: In this issue we’re reviewing two books by Ben Hewitt—there was no intention to give special treat- ment to this author (or Rodale), it was simply a matter of the reviewers’ choices.]
The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food By Ben Hewitt (Rodale Press, 2010)
Many books have been written about individual quests to eat lo- cally (Barbara Kingsolver’s Ani- mal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year
of Food Life and Alisa Smith’s The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating easily come to mind). Ben Hewitt takes a different approach with The Town that Food Saved by chronicling the efforts in a small northwestern Vermont town (population around 3,200) to establish a local food system that will not only feeds its residents, but also create jobs, build community, and transform
Winter/Spring 2012
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